The best hot cross buns in New Zealand are packed with plump fruit soaked in a splash of orange-flavoured liqueur. Mixed peel boosts the strong citrus notes, which gives them the winning edge.
By Nicky Park of RNZ
These buns, from Michael's Bakery in Hillmorton, Christchurch, beat 48 other competitors to win the supreme award in Baking New Zealand's annual hot cross bun contest.
After a day of independent judging, the jury – of three industry bakers and Seven Sharp presenter Hilary Barry – unanimously picked the traditional hot cross bun as this year's best.
"We went back over the table and without looking at the marks they just pointed to the winner straight away," says head judge, and previous two-time winner, Marcus Braun.
"You could really sort of taste and smell the citrus notes in the bun which are really, really nice and outstanding," he says.
Winning baker, Mike Meaclem says his winning recipe is a refined version of the one that scored them bronze last year. They began baking this year's hot cross buns in February, sending them home with some regular customers for tasting and feedback.
"I'm a big fan of citrus and spices, they go so well together, so we decided to condition our fruit with Cointreau – when we say condition it means you soak them, you drain them, you dry them – so that added a beautiful flavour," Meaclem says.
"We tend to make a really nice soft bun, we use a lot of New Zealand butter and a lot of eggs in our dough, so it's very, very rich.
"We're very much traditional to the point that we even use a choux pastry for our crosses... it's a very old-fashioned way of doing it, but it does give an excellent mouth feel."
Meaclem's small bakery – the husband and wife employ five staff – won in 2019 so they're primed to bake thousands of hot cross buns around the clock till Easter.
He says their 2am starting time would become 10pm, working through the night prepping, baking, cooling and boxing half dozen packs of the buns that sell for $18 a pop. Last time they had lines out the door from 6am. They sold between 15 and 20,000 packets of six buns.
"We basically worked through the night, and we came back as the staff were closing the shop, we came back to start production again. It was just basically 24/7 and we had to not open Easter because we were so, so tired."
The second placed hot cross bun came from last year's winner, Wellington's Nada Bakery. Third prize went to the crew from popular Auckland bakery Daily Bread, who had won three years in a row.
Bakers were asked to batch bake and cross half a dozen buns for entry, weighing no more than 900g for the six. They were sent to Christchurch for sampling.
Half of all points are awarded for flavour.
"The first part of when we're tasting these buns is that we smell them... we crack them open and we have a nice smell, and get the aroma of the fruit and the spice.
"Then you're actually touching and feeling the actual product to make sure that it's a nice texture, and then, when you eat it, it's the mouthfeel and the flavour."
Another 25% is graded on visual appeal (a nice straight cross, six evenly sized buns painted with a glossy glaze) and the last quarter comes down to technical skill.
"If I gave all 49 bakers exactly the same recipe and the same method and said make me this recipe I would get 49 different outcomes," Braun said.
They needed a nice even bake on the top and bottom and judges wanted to see the fruit and the spice straight away, before tasting it. (A baker's hot cross bun spice mix is kept top secret, Braun says.)
In sampling the buns, judges ate them at room temperature, with no butter: "100% the bun has to stand alone on its own".
But Braun, who has been in the baking business for nearly 30 years - typically takes his "lightly toasted with lots of butter".
He's a believer in the limited availability of the Easter treat. We should be eating them from early March and just for a few weeks after Easter, he says.
"Enjoy the, the seasonality of it. That's really important. It's a little bit like fruit mince tarts, isn't it? You know, if you ate them all year round, you'd probably get sick of them, but you know that they're only gonna be around for a certain period of time."
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